MI5 ignored warnings about a Soviet spy because they came from a woman

Mona Maund was one of Britain's first female intelligence agents

Mona Maund penetrated the Communist Party in the 1930s and identified the Soviet Union’s longest-serving British spy. But she was brushed off by a male boss who didn’t think much of women in espionage.

One of Britain’s first female intelligence agents, her identity has come to light in a new book. She came from a conservative, upper-class background and worked unnoticed as a typist, passing back secrets the whole time under the codename M/2. Maund was 37 when she filed her first report to MI5 in 1932.

The man who recruited her, Maxwell Knight, was MI5’s first great spymaster and the inventor